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Archives for December 2001
December 30, 2001
Just a quickie update for all alert readers who
have been wondering if I've either vanished off the
face of the planet, or fallen victim to the lures
of holiday delirium - actually I'm up in Bend, Oregon,
hanging out with friends and trying not to freeze my
typing fingers off in all the damn snow and cold here...
If I'm lucky, I'll be back 7th January, 2002.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, all.
December 23, 2001
It's just been delicately pointed out to me that I need to
keep my blog updated more often. Yeah, I know. But, but, ...
I've been very busy over the last week with Christmas preparations.
Y'all know how that goes. I did find time however to indulge
in the 3-hour visual marathon of "Lord of the Rings".
My review will follow shortly.
December 16, 2001
Cheerful news on a Sunday morning: Another publisher is biting
the bullet - McGraw Hill is cutting 925 jobs
And Mightywords is closing down altogether ...
On the bright side: Only 3 days to the opening of Lord of the Rings! Woohoo!
December 13, 2001
Patience is a virtue. And in the case of properly defrosting
your freezer, even more so. Not according to
this guy though ...
And from Slashdot too:
a pyro's dream...
December 11, 2001
As Californian, you'd think I'd be used to power outages
by now.
Not so. When an outage zapped my system yesterday and
left me standing wrapped in darkness and without the comforting hum
of my computer, I found myself abruptly most utterly lost.
A long blog rant had just vanished into thin air, the words
I had so carefully extracted cruelly extinguished in less
than a blink of the eye.
My freezer was defrosting its contents by the minute, and I
could almost hear my stash of ice cream scream in terror.
All the lightbulbs in all the rooms seemed to have grown
eyes, dull blank ones, and were staring at me mockingly.
The phone was disturbingly quiet and appeared to sneer at me
with a sardonic grin.
For a few mintues, I had a claustrophobically orwellian notion of
what it must be like to live in a completely wired dwelling.
Not even being able to open the front door and exit one's own
house at will. Being completely reliant on some corrupt and
diabolically monopolistic power company to fix the problem
so one can continue on with life as usual.
I wanted to instantly pack my bags and move
to some godforsaken lake in Canada somewhere - where I
could live in a nice low-tech log house on the water,
eat berries and fish all day, and read Jack London or
H.D. Thoreau by candle light.
Of course then the power came back on, signaled by a low
thump of the stereo system's subwoofer. My fridge casually
sprang to life again with its trusted noises, the lightbulbs
had lost their dead eyes and were glowing now with reassuring
warmth, and the phone was blinking cheerfully to let me know
that I needed to rerecord my outgoing message.
Never mind all that log house crap. I'm staying right here.
December 10, 2001
We've all come to expect Web content to be free, not taking
into account that the thousands of site staffers and writers
who so graciously provide us with this information need to
eat too. Salon.com's Scott Rosenberg has written a most
worthwhile article
on the certainty of a pay-per-view Web, and how Salon did
the virtually impossible by succeeding with their subscription
model.
December 7, 2001
Do yourself a favor this weekend: Escape the soulless, only
momentarily dazzling, and franchise-saturated special-effects
flicks (don't make me name names - you know who they are),
and go see a *real* movie.
Amelie is one of the best movies of this year -
and not only because it has a actual story line, but because
it possesses wit, charm, heart, and a touch of most delightful quirkyness.
Your soul will thank you later.
And I sure hope Lord of the Rings
won't fall victim to the story-cannibalizing greed of Hollywood...
In other good news today - as a Brazilian, you can get your coffee fix
now from .... stamps.
December 6, 2001
NYT (Free registration required, bla bla bla): Email is thirty today!
Who would have thought? And
how the hell did I survive the first twenty years of my life without it?
It's become such an intricate part of my life that I caught
myself last week, in a moment of kafkaesque weakness, wishing for
an automated email delivery system that would relieve me of the
painful task of writing those Christmas cards ...
And what better time than the Holidays to encourage your kids to
become
war-happy, foaming-at-the-mouth, flag-saluting Americans? After all - there's a plastic GI Joe,
in camouflage garb and outfitted with a precise replica of the latest automatic weapon, sitting
on the shelf of your neighborhood Toys'R'Us, just waiting for your 5-year old to be taken home, admired,
studied, and cast in his own private mini-war against turban-wearing, bearded foreigners.
Worst job in Singapore [Thanks, Luke]
But on the bright side: Seems fishnet tights, blue hair, studded chokers, and Metallica action figures
are recession-proof: Goth is hot.
December 4, 2001
Well, at least one thing's for certain: If Bridget Jones would
have kept her diary like I keep my blog, she would have pushed
a walker by the time she would have had enough material together
to warrant a book, not to mention a movie...
In other news today, a Bay Area man
pleads guilty in court on charges of pirating software
that should have been free in the first place.
On the other hand, Scoble
reports: "Yesterday Gates bashed himself and his company
and his CEO. All in fun, but some in seriousness. He
demonstrated that he's able to admit where his software
sucks, where his company sucks, and that he has a lot of fun
at the same time. He's a geek and enjoys playing with technology."
New times at Microsoft? Or maybe they have finally seen that
not only their software, but most of all their PR sucks.
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